Fw: [Virtools] Short history of love , $ and i3D.

I tried to send the message below last week. As it did not go through I post it again.

----- Original Message -----

Sent: Friday, September 14, 2001 12:40 AM

Subject: Fw: [Virtools] Short history of love , $ and i3D.

As I just received an unpleasing message from someone (who used my direct e-mail and not the newsgroup), I want to clarify

a few points about the mail I sent when receiving Adrian's point of view.

1 If I used a south american language (Venezuelan) it is because I felt happy to answer to someone who could understand it and because I love this language.

2 The translation of "Me parece un poco optimistico el hombre" is "This man seems TO ME a little bit optimistic". It is MY point of view. And being optimistic

is different from being wrong.

3 The main point of the answer I gave is: Training of any kind will not turn a product with problems into a production tool.

This was relevant as Adrian was advertising training. I am sorry it was not in english, (I won't do it again:-)

4 The 3DSound bug is a new one and still apply. And I do think I am right to use this board to report bugs as I use the Swapmeet because I have no other official

5 Freedom of speech means (at least to me) the right to express someone happiness as well as someone sadness.

6 If I take the time to write all these it's just because I do appreciate the idea lying underneath of Virtools and I'd like to use it at its best!

----- Original Message -----

From: ChrGarnier

To: Virt_User_Group ; dujardin@virtools.com

Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2001 9:01 PM

Subject: Re: [Virtools] Short history of love , $ and i3D.

There is nothing from with facts. There are his facts and my facts, that's all. My facts as his are experienced based and my mail's aim

was to balance an optimistic point of view with an other one much less optimistic.

For example I appreciate I do not have to produce using Dev as it is today. How about if a client was asking me to add a 3DSound to the delivery?

I hope Adrian will never be in this situation.

----- Original Message -----

Sent: Monday, September 10, 2001 1:19 PM

Subject: RE: [Virtools] Short history of love , $ and i3D.

Adrian reports that he is making money using the software and that he is having a good experience with it, and your only comment to his e-mail is 'this sounds a bit optimistic!'.

From what I understand in Adrian's message, it's not an 'optimistic' point of view., it's just facts. What's wrong with facts? What is your point?

From one hand I am right know filling up the Swapmeet with a new bug (3Dsound) while with the other

I check the mail and get this one.

Me parece un poco optimistico el hombre. El entrenamiento nunca va a volver un producto problematico

en una herramienta para producir.

And while I could tell the same kind of history (actually with the same player (my regards to Leila)) the outcome

is not always as successfull as you report.

----- Original Message -----

Sent: Friday, September 07, 2001 10:05 PM

Subject: [Virtools] Short history of love , $ and i3D.

As a member of "the swapmeet" and Dev 2.0 user I think that many of you will find our own experience with Virtools, at least usefull...

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Let me first introduce myself. Im Adrian Simonovich, CEO of SIA Sistemas.

SIA Sistemas is an Argentinian company that employs 25 people and has 5 year experience developing i3D solutions, including developments on the games, e-commerce and simulation markets.

Our customers are big multinational companies like Coca Cola, Shell, Citibank, Carrefour, etc.

We developed our applications using nearly all the comercial packages including Super***e, Sens*8, Wildtang*nt, Dire**X, etc. etc.,etc. I know many of you from other users lists..

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We first contacted Virtools on March 2000 interested for the quality of the demos .

We received a limited demo, and to be honest we didn't liked very much the idea of programming on a graphical environment but we started testing the product with many problems.

We assisted to Siggraph 2000 (New Orleans) and we confirmed our previous idea when we meet N**o team..

A very disorganized group of high motivated people.

Somebody made a demo in front of 50 or 100 people, I never saw a demo crashing so many times.... the demo machine was rebooted time after time...

In the other hand the content of the demo was amazing... procedural textures, physics behavior, animations & geometry imported straight from 3D Max, collision detection , great rendering quality, etc. etc.

The "promise" of N**o "NextGen" (that was the name of Dev 2.0 at that time) was made at the event.... we couldn't resist to it..

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We re-contacted with the Virtools people on Hanoover at Cebit 2001 and we realized that Dev 2.0 was a reallity !!

This time the product was working fine, the demos were very impressive and this time we received a clear picture of Virtools vision from Virgile Delporte.

Let me say that selling the product to SIA was not a trivial task... it was more than a year from the initial contact !!!

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We bought a 3 seats package + physics + some spacial drivers.

A huge investment for a small company located in South America....

We were "warn" to receive training, but we resolved that hiring "Einstein to learn how to add 2 integers was nonsense".

After 2 weeks "playing" with Dev we received a P.O. from Carrefour (supermarket) & Oreo (cookies from Nabisco) to made a stand alone "Pacman style" game to be used at point of sale..

2 weeks later our project was finish and our customer happy. I realized that the project was 80% made by a 3D artist !!!

This project payed back our whole investment on Virtools technology.

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I have to be honest and say that we were disappointed by documentation so we decided to contract training.

Leila Ait Kaci from Virtools was sent to accomplish this difficult mission....

We can say that the training was for "beginers" given that assistants included programers, 3D artists, marketing people, etc.

but Leila managed so well to cover most of the aspects of the products including the Physics package and the SDK.

I can say that we discover the product during the training !!

By nature documentation of a "graphic" product is not a trivial task, documenting the kind of training we received from Leila is just impossible.

Even if we could have the best documentation, I think that training is the best investment I have done.

If your company has a team of 4 or more people, training will save at least 2 months of "research by yourself"

so, it will be paid back before starting it and it will put you on the right track.

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We consider Dev not just a development tool, but also a "business" tool, it allow us "redefine" the tasks of our team.

For first time our 3D artists are making the tasks that consume most of the time in a project. Including basic scripting an all the collision related work.

We signed a contract with a regional broadband operator and we are making "prototypes" of games in days instead months !!

I just want to thank Leila for her patience and talent in training our people. I don't know the other traineers at Virtools (please don't be jealous!) but I really suggest to training with Leila.

I want also thank to Virtools team for Dev 2.0, we are falling in love with the product.....(and also earning some $)

Regards, Adrian Simonovich.

PD1: If you are new using Virtools, take training even if you got experince developing i3D

PD2: Sorry for my english... I have to improve it...

SIA Sistemas

Araoz 946
C1414DPT Capital Federal
Buenos Aires Argentina
tel/fax 054 11 4778-9000

mail@siasistemas.com.ar
http://www.siasistemas.com.ar

SIA Sistemas